


les mystères de l'horizon

by hungerpunch



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Espionage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:57:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2322929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungerpunch/pseuds/hungerpunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Preferably heist!fic, but anything with ziall as partners in crime (con artists, hackers, assassins, etc.) in an ot5 team. I'd like for one of them to be new to the team and for Zayn and Niall to start off on the wrong foot."</p>
            </blockquote>





	les mystères de l'horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [criminiallar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/criminiallar/gifts).



> for [criminiallar](http://criminiallar.tumblr.com/) and her lovely prompt. i ended up deviating a little but i hope the end result is pleasing to you, darling! 
> 
> much love to the sweethearts who lent their dedicated beta eyes to this throughout various stages: [castoffstarter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/castoffstarter), [crwthr](http://crwthr.tumblr.com/), [bisousniall](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bisousniall), and s of [hostagesfic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hostagesfic). whatever error is left is purely my own fault. 
> 
> sorry this is not brit/irish-picked! i'm sure there are some glaring americanisms. please do point them out to me in a comment so that i might rectify them! ♥

When Louis first approaches him about the job, Zayn's on the back deck of one of his safe houses in Dubai. Louis drops down from his roof.

“You're lucky your head's not blown off right now,” Zayn says, cigarette clenched between two fingers even as he levels his gun with both hands. No need to waste a perfectly good smoke, after all.

“Calm down drama queen—” Zayn swallows a noise because if that title belongs to anyone, it's Louis, not him. “—I have a proposition for you, but I couldn't get your latest stats off anyone without paying an ungodly sum for 'em. And like fuck I'm going to pay to get my own mate's mobile number.”

“Not sure I like the fact that it was easier to find me than it was to get my number,” Zayn mumbles around a deep drag, slipping his gun back into place along his thigh.

“I wouldn't say easy,” Louis waves his hand. “I tried your addresses in New York and Sweden, first. Can you believe all the airfare still cost me less than nine little digits would have? Thank you, frequent flier miles.”

“Proposition?” Zayn tries to move the conversation along; if he doesn't, they could stand here all night bullshitting. Despite his cool front, it's good to see a familiar face. If Louis had bothered to ring his doorbell instead of startling him, they might have started this off with a hug rather than a brandished semiautomatic.

But Louis just rubs his hands together like a mad scientist instead. “I'm putting together a team for a job. I've actually been working with the same team for a while, have you heard?”

Zayn shakes his head, totaling the cigarette and grinding the filter under the heel of his boot. “Just did eight months in Burma. Not really been tuned into the community.”

“You always did like those long cons,” Louis says and Zayn's about to argue that eight months does not constitute as a “long con” when Louis continues.

“It's me, Payne, Styles, and Niall Horan, who I'm not sure you've ever met before.” Zayn shakes his head no, though he has worked alongside the others in rare cases. They're good lads, for the most part. Styles is green around the edges, but good. “I've just about everything for this job lined up, have everyone on board, but—”

Zayn can see where it's all going, now. “But you're missing something.”

Louis looks at him sidelong, a thumb rubbing his stubble in what Zayn knows is a nervous tic. “We're missing something,” he agrees.

Zayn shuffles out to lean his elbows on the railing and peer out over the smoky landscape of Dubai. “I prefer working alone, Lou.” He doesn't do it exclusively, but it's been a long time since he's had anyone else in his pocket.

“But don't you get tired of it?” Louis asks, exasperated already. “Don't you get tired of, of—whole years spent in negative space, completely apart from, like, _life_?”

“Who did you call the drama queen again?”

Louis drops the bit and goes in for the kill. “We need a references expert. You're the best forger I know.”

Zayn thinks of all the passports, birth certificates, diplomas, prescriptions, security clearance passes and government badges he's forged. Of his perfect replica of Caspar David Friedrich's “The Monk by the Sea” hanging in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie.

“Definitely the best that you know,” Zayn says. “But not the only.”

“Yes, but I trust you. And you trust me. That means a lot in our line of work.” He blows a breath of air towards his forehead, stirring the errant hair there. “And you'd get two million out of it.”

_Leave it to Louis god damned Tomlinson,_ Zayn thinks. On a heaved sigh, he concedes defeat.

“One job,” he says, holding up his finger. “One.”

And that's how he winds up back in London.

︾

London is not the place it used to be for Zayn, anymore. He attended the Royal Academy years ago for painting, all set up to be the artist he'd dreamed of since he was a little kid. The city was a hub of muse for him back then. He loved it, loved the contrast between it and his small hometown of Bradford. For so long, London had been The Goal, The Dream.

In the Academy, contemporary art was a principle, but he'd been trying to strengthen his techniques by replicating works of the old masters. He'd been finishing a Manet when a professor had approached him and asked if he'd sell it.

Zayn had stared at the check in his hand while his professor pushed his spectacles up his nose. “And in the future, would you be available to commission?”

And that's where it had all started. Abstractly, without a name, but Zayn parsed it out over time: his professor dealt in forgeries. Zayn was inadvertently aiding in art theft, though at what level he wasn't sure. When he got the balls to ask about it, in no uncertain terms, his professor had only replied, “Why? Do you want in?”

And he hadn’t, not really. Except the feeling of holding a check big enough to pay for an entire year of his sister's university tuition was indescribable and also addictive.

In the span of a week, three things happened: he turned nineteen, he said, “Count me in,” and he left the Royal Academy for good.

He's more or less avoided London on the whole since then, until now. He finds himself smack in the city proper. Right here at the headquarters of whatever the fuck Louis has put together, standing on the sidewalk and staring up at the high rise, reeling.

(“You're in an office building?” Zayn had asked drily upon being given the address. “Isn't that, I don't know. A bit... reckless?”

Louis grinned, far too smug. “It's called a front, Malik. I’ve a consulting firm.”

“Of bloody course you do.”)

Zayn can't help the sweat beading under his collar as he elects to walk up the five flights to Tomlinson Consulting rather than take the elevator, and it isn't just from the stairs. He's nervous, properly nervous, for no reason that he can sum up concisely. He hasn't seen Liam in at least two years, Harry in even longer, and he's had this image in his mind of them all being best chums while Zayn was hunkered down in fucking Burma.

Which was voluntary—he _liked_ being hunkered down in fucking Burma, okay, thanks—he just doesn't know what kind of chemistry he's stepping into, here. He's the independent variable, so to speak.

Zayn has to be buzzed into the suite by a central receptionist, and the double frosted glass doors glide open to reveal a fishbowl foyer that reminds him of a cross between the Google campus and a print factory—gleaming white panels sandwiched between industrial floors and ceilings.

“Malik!” Louis calls, coming out from one of the adjoining rooms and welcoming him into a one-armed hug. It's not how highly trained con artists-cum-spies greet each other, but Zayn folds into it anyway. He supposes if Louis knows all his addresses, formality's a moot point.

Three other people filter into the main room of HQ on Louis' heels and Zayn can't help a small smile. “Good to see you,” he tells a very tanned Harry. “Hair's gotten so long.”

Harry's hug is more encompassing than Louis', but Zayn remembers that about him. Always touchy feely; Zayn used to check that he hadn't been bugged after each of Harry's hugs, when they first met.

“Useful for disguises,” Harry tells him with a slow wink.

Then comes Liam, who keeps a respectful distance with a firm handshake but is quick to smile warmly at Zayn, eyes crinkling happily. “Glad to have you with us, it's been ages,” he says.

“And this is Niall,” Louis introduces, one hand briefly touching Zayn's shoulder to guide him closer to the only person he doesn't know. He's standing there in a simple white t-shirt and dark wash jeans, more casual than the rest of them by half and more youthful thanks to his bleachy highlights, but Zayn knows better than to underestimate people in this field based on appearances.

“Pleased to meet you,” Niall says, moving to shake his hand. His shake doesn't last as long as Liam's, and his accompanying grin is thin and fleeting. It's nothing that isn't perfectly polite, but Zayn is designed to notice details. He watches Niall's gaze flutter over him and then away, the subtle weight shift from foot to foot. He's uncomfortable. Zayn can't help but bristle a little—it better not be a race thing. But more likely, he tries to tell himself, perhaps things weren't even across the board about recruiting another person. Maybe Niall preferred them as a four-piece, or preferred the bigger paycheck.

“Zayn,” he says of himself, calmly, though that's obvious at this point. “Nice to meet you.” He's not trying to step on anyone's toes, and he attempts to meet Niall's eyes again in order to convey exactly that. But Niall only nods as he steps back, slipping his hands into his pockets. Before anything else can be said Liam is offering to show Zayn to his office.

“You've a great view of the city, mate, you'll love it.” Zayn isn't sure why he needs an office when he'll only be here a couple weeks to months at the most, but he stops the protest in his throat when he sees the view. “Great” is an understatement.

They leave him to settle in for a bit though he hasn't much to necessarily settle. He unpacks his laptop and hooks it up to the provided triad of monitors, arranges a coffee mug full of his favorite pens, and Snapchats his view to Danny from the mobile only the Riachs have the number of. 

Eventually he wanders out into the hallway and Harry, who is swooping by in his gangly fashion, offers to show him to the kitchen.

The kitchen is actually a mere kitchenette, but it's more than Zayn's had for some jobs. The tea cabinet is impressive; apparently everyone's got different tastes. He's actually feeling like a cuppa so he pulls down the box of lemon ginger.

“Wouldn't do that if I were you,” Harry says. “Niall keeps count of how many are in there.”

“What?” Zayn says. “Seriously? It's only tea.” He shakes the box as if to emphasize his point.

Harry shrugs. “It's a thing. I dunno, mate, just take some of Louis' Yorkshire and spare yourself.”

Zayn barely refrains from rolling his eyes—or something equally petulant—but he puts the lemon ginger back and takes down the tin of Yorkshire. Harry clicks the kettle on for him.

“So if I'm the references expert,” Zayn says as they wait for the water to boil, “What does that make you lot?”

“Well,” Harry says, running one tattooed hand through his hair. “Louis is the pipeline for all our chemicals. Sedatives, tranqs, black market prescription stuff. Gases, explosive things. All that junk.” Zayn nods, not really surprised. Louis always liked things that seemed like magic on the outside, all science on the inside. He's listed _The Illusionist_ as his favorite film to Zayn on several occasions.

“Liam is our gear guy: gadgets, guns, ropes, vests, knives,” he ticks off on his fingers. “Et Cetera.” He swivels to open a cabinet, withdrawing a bunch of bananas and breaking one off to peel seamlessly.

“Niall is—”

“Niall,” interrupts Niall himself, striding through the door of the kitchenette with a raised eyebrow in Harry's direction and a point to his voice, “is technical.” Zayn sees Harry swallow his bite of banana in his peripheral vision, observing as Niall opens the refrigerator and roots around in it. “Video, audio, blah blah. I can hack just about anything for ya. Standard affair.”

The odd bit is Harry looks almost guilty, biting his lower lip and gazing at the floor. Niall straightens up from the fridge with a take-out carton marked “Chop Suey” on the top in hastily-scribbled marker. “Cheers lads,” he says, retreating from the room without looking at either of them. The entire exchange feels like he's looked at it through a funhouse mirror, distorted somehow.

Before Zayn can ask anything, though, Harry smiles and returns to their previous conversation.“And I'm transportation!” He points at himself proudly.

Deciding to let himself be distracted for now, Zayn crosses his arms and leans against the counter. “I do remember that about you.” Harry looks pleased. “You were the getaway car.” They had worked a job together once, years ago, and everything about it had gone pear-shaped. Harry and his sharp driving are probably the only reason the entire team weren't overtaken and held hostage.

“Cars in general. Or helicopters. Planes. Also boats!”

Zayn shakes his head. “Anything but a getaway boat, please.”

At the end of the day, Liam leans against the door jamb to his office and asks if he'd like to grab a drink. Zayn bites his lip briefly, making a show of leafing through the preliminary paperwork on his desk. He's really feeling like he just wants to go back to his rented flat and curl into the corner of the sofa with his laptop and some dinner, while away the hours clicking back and forth between Skyrim and research.

But he hasn't seen Liam for real in so long, and when he glances up, Liam's face is looking rather earnest, so Zayn agrees. He promises himself internally, _Just one drink_.

Liam chooses a small gastropub within safe walking distance. Zayn is acutely aware that they're both automatically taking stock of everything around them: people, cars, rooftops—a habit he probably won't break even if he lives into old age. It's as intrinsic to him as breathing at this point.

Zayn hasn't been out to drink socially in forever, feels slightly uncomfortable as they slip into the cool darkness of the pub, trying not to show it as he follows Liam up onto a stool. His eyes skim over the tap handles but he forgoes beer and orders the first hard liquor drink he can think of: an old fashioned. Liam gets a double shot of bourbon alongside a glass of Blackheart. Zayn feels a bit silly with his orange slice and cherry next to Liam's frothing stout but. Whatever.

"So what's the deal with Niall?" Zayn asks at length, sipping casually at his drink, staring at the rows and rows of premium liquor behind the bar instead of looking at Liam.

The split second of pause is tense. "What do you mean, what's the deal?" Liam asks delicately.

Zayn purses his lips and swirls the rocks around in his glass, listening to the gentle clinking. "I mean, does he have a problem with me or something?"

When he finally looks sideways, he sees a little furrow of consternation has scrunched up between Liam's caterpillar eyebrows as he frowns. "I shouldn't think so. He hasn't been rude to you, has he?" The way he says it is as if he genuinely cannot fathom the idea.

"No," Zayn's forced to admit. Niall's been nothing short of polite. "But I just feel like, there's some weird, I dunno. Tension, like, with him."

Liam shrugs, holds the half-cocked purse of his lips for a moment before speaking. "Niall's gone through a lot recently," he murmurs, palming his pint glass from hand to hand across the smooth counter restlessly. "It's not really my place to talk about it." Zayn fishes the maraschino cherry out of his drink prematurely and eats it, twisting the stem off between his teeth and mulling over that.

“All right,” he relents, but he's suspicious now. “How long have you known him for?”

He clocks the small smile that crosses Liam's face before he takes a slug from his pint. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and answers, “Oh... years. I don't even know. We came up in the same program, like. Both recruited from—”

“The military, right?” Zayn supplies, remembering when they first met and the little bits of information Liam had given to him slowly.

Liam nods. “Right. Yeah, sorry, I forget what all you know.” He shifts on his stool. “Right. So, we were both pulled from boot camp actually, for a special ops program. They wanted young guys, you know?”

Zayn hears what Liam means instead. _Naive. Desperate._ “Yeah,” he says. “I feel that.”

“And then what do you know?” Liam laughs, but it's somber, a touch self-depreciating. “We went rogue together.”

“What a pair,” Zayn smiles now, because he doesn't want Liam to start weeping at the bar or anything. “It's been a party ever since, I'm sure.”

Liam swipes his thumb through the lacing of his beer round the rim of his glass. “A party, yeah.”

︾

“Okay, lads, let's get down to business,” Louis declares the next morning, uncapping a dry erase marker in the conference room.

“To defeat the Huns,” Harry finishes. Liam laughs, and Zayn can't believe this is life right now. Is this even a real job? In slanted chicken scratch, Louis writes out: _SYNTHETIC BIOMARKERS_.

“What's a synthetic biomarker?” Harry asks.

“Lets you test for diseases using nanoparticles,” Niall says casually, like he just knows about that stuff.

“Yeah, that,” Louis says. “Don't get too excited, it's not actually invented yet. It's a patent.” Zayn sits back in his chair, drifting his own fingertips back and forth across his stubble.

“Patent theft?” he says, eyes narrowing. Patent theft is... not easy, but quite prevalent throughout history. It's not something Zayn has specific experience with, but surely between the five of them, it will be a piece of cake.

“It's not so easy as that,” Louis says. “With every controversial patent, there are going to be people trying to steal it. Why on god's earth the patent offices aren't digital by now—”

“Not like that would save them,” Niall murmurs, cracking his knuckles, and Zayn lets out a soft huff of air through his nose, something like amusement.

“The point is, we're not really trying to steal it. Well, yes, but no—”

“Louis,” Liam sighs, and Louis frowns at him but gets to the point.

“This patent's already been stolen once, we're trying to steal it back.”

“Who stole it the first time?” Zayn asks.

Louis' mouth twists as if he's bit into something sour and doesn't have the pleasure of following it up with a shot of tequila. “Another English group—we've run into them before—contracted by Philip Green.”

“The retail mogul?”

“The very one.”

Liam looks vexed. “What's he want with a medicine patent?”

“Who knows, who cares,” Louis says. “Rich people just want to have things, end of.”

“Well, I had drinks with his nephew once,” Harry smiles genuinely, scooping his hair off his forehead and twisting it up into a little bun on top of his head. “Nice but rather boring.” Zayn has given up trying to understand his psychology completely.

“There's not going to be a conflict of personal interest is there, Styles?” Niall asks, waggling his eyebrows.

Harry sniffs. “None whatsoever.” He dusts his shirt off.

“So we're recovering a stolen patent,” Liam says, refocusing them. “Who's the rightful owner of it?”

Louis slips a photo out of a manilla folder and tapes it on the board. “Sangeeta Bhatia.”

“You might have heard about her other nanomedicine inventions,” Niall says, but no one pipes up. He pulls a face. “Nevermind, then. Wrong crowd.”

“I've heard of her,” Zayn says softly, then ducks his head. Because Waliyha is in med school now, Zayn making the payments annually, and he knows he's heard her talk about Sangeeta. Mostly in a tone of reverence. “Only in passing, I mean,” he says, and they all nod.

Liam sits forward in his chair. “So she's offered us what for returning it?”

“Well, she approached healthcare titan, Patrick Soon-Shiong—” Louis tapes another picture on the board “—for assistance in funding a recovery mission. Together they've offered us a cool 10 mil.”

Harry claps his hands together, clearly sold. “So what's the plan?”

Louis points at Niall, who straightens up in his chair. “Right, Louis and I have actually already talked a bit about this,” Niall says. He scratches idly at the side of his throat, balancing his notepad on his thigh. “The patent was stolen from the small IPO branch here in London. Luckily we already have tabs on its current location, which is Green’s law firm, Green and Schultz, in Newcastle.”

“It’s still in England?” Liam scoffs. “What an idiot.”

“Eh,” Niall says. “It’s a valid strategy. Nobody thinks to look close to home, do they?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Payne,” Louis says. “Do you _want_ to be traveling arse over teakettle for a few sheets of paper?” 

“No,” Liam says, only halfway decently masking his pout. 

Louis takes the reigns back over. “It’s likely he intends to eventually re-file the patent under a new title at a different IPO branch.” He takes a breath. “But we can't simply steal it back—it would flip the heat on Bhatia. For safety, we've decided the best plan is probably to recover the real patent and leave a decoy in its place.”

Niall looks to Zayn then, pupils dilated under the florescent lights so that the blue of them is extra catching. “That's why we need you.”

“Not the only reason,” Louis says, “but the main.”

Zayn shifts under the weight of everyone's attention, scribbles a series of circles on his page to release the nervous energy. “I'll just need to study up,” he says into the silence. “Sure it's nothing I can't handle.”

“Niall can help you with resources, too,” Louis says, “He's good at that.”

Niall doesn't confirm or deny his aptitude for resources—not that Zayn can't do his own legwork, but, help might be nice—just gives a short nod and turns his attention to his paper, dashing off some superfluous note in the corner and letting Louis continue on talking.

They leave the meeting with a thick folder a piece: sheets of information on the patent; bios of Sangeeta Bhatia, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Philip Green; specs on the Green & Schultz firm. Nothing exceptionally difficult, but it'll take his full attention. Zayn's thinking he might grill some asparagus to go with the leftover rosemary salmon he has. He can already imagine sinking down in an armchair after eating, a good glass of Chianti in one hand and the case files in the other.

“Malik,” Louis grabs his elbow as they're shuffling to their offices to fetch their jackets and satchels and the like. “Come for Thai with me?”

Zayn hesitates one moment—drinks yesterday with Liam, dinner tonight with Louis—but shrugs; Thai sounds good too. Besides, dinner can't last long. He'll still do the reading. “Let me transfer some files to my external, yeah?” he says.

“Fine,” Louis says. “Just meet me outside when you're ready, I need a smoke.”

Once he sits down at his desk, he realizes he needs to compress the files before transferring. He gets the compression started and then texts Louis: _Give me 10_

Louis pings back a second later, irritation tangible even through text: _ffs_. Zayn shrugs and pulls up Candy Crush on his phone while he waits. When the files are compressed and transferred, he gathers his things, shrugs into his leather jacket, and shuts his door behind him soundly.

By then, he's sure everyone else has already left, or at least gone to join Louis for a smoke outside, but there's one light left on. Niall's. Curious, Zayn treads to the edge of the square of light falling sharply out the doorway and onto the carpet. He leans just the littlest bit over, peering curiously into Niall's office.

Niall's sitting at his desk, four open binders in an arc around him, a pair of glasses Zayn's not seen yet perched low on his nose, one hand shuffling the computer mouse around and the other rubbing his knee. It's not the first time Zayn's seen him favor his knee but now he pauses, wincing, and looks down from his monitors—he has six. _Six_ —to give it his full attention, both hands going to rub just below the kneecap, a long suffering sigh escaping him. He looks, for the first time that Zayn's ever noticed, tired.

Despite Zayn not making a sound, Niall looks up sharply after a few seconds. He's surprised for a half-second, eyebrows jumping, before he smooths it over, every feature of his face turning neutral, sitting up quickly and bringing his hands to his keyboard. “Zayn,” he says. “What are you still doing here?” He manages to not make it sound accusatory.

“I just had to save some stuff,” Zayn says, definitely embarrassed at being caught and hoping his cheeks aren't burning. “Aren't _you_ going home?” he asks, flipping the attention away from himself.

“Probably not,” he says, grimacing afterward as though he regrets his impulse to be honest. As if he should have told Zayn something about going home to see his girlfriend, or take his dogs out; try to front like he's a normal person, as if Zayn would buy for a second that any of them are. Niall's lips twist into a crooked effort of a grin. “No rest for the wicked, right?”

Zayn huffs out a derisive laugh. He hasn't been able to parse Niall out as well as he can normally, it's true, but he's not sure “wicked” is a word he'd ascribe to him. His desk lamp is one that mimics daylight, or halogen maybe—warmer at any rate than Zayn's—the light washing over Niall gently, casting his hair golden. Not very wicked at all. _Maybe that's how he gets them_ , Zayn thinks of the countless marks he's sure Niall's taken down. _Subterfuge._ He catalogs the freckles on Niall's neck and the way his fingernails are bitten down and revises that thought: that's definitely how he gets them.

“Liam will be in fits if he finds out you're pulling all-nighters,” Zayn dares to tease, just a little, the slightest attempt at camaraderie.

Niall's grin morphs into something genuine, startlingly so, and he pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “That's why he's not going to find out, right?”

Zayn smiles back, tentative. This is the first bond they've struck that feels uniquely their own. He holds up a single finger. “Just this once, Horan,” he says. “If I catch you again, I'm reporting you to Payne.”

Niall rolls his eyes, not unkindly, but definitively swivels back to his desktop. “See you in the morning.” Zayn takes the dismissal easily, even a fraction relieved, noticing as he finishes his walk out of the darkened suite that there's sweat on the back of his neck.

He prods Louis—who is properly grumpy about waiting around for “a thousand fucking years”—for information over Thai. “Tell me about Niall,” he says in between bites of his curried coconut chicken.

Louis lets out a less than polite belch and shrugs. “Very skinny, slightly short, spreadsheets-obsessed Irishman. What else is there to know?”

“He was in the military with Liam,” Zayn says.

“So you did your research, what do you want, a gold star?”

“C'mon,” Zayn needles. “I just mean, like. I haven't really been able to get a read on him, which is unusual for me.”

“Modesty is a nice look on you.”

“Liam said he had some like, stuff going on or something.”

“Are you fucking joking,” Louis deadpans, and Zayn has an alarming feeling he’s just gotten Liam in trouble, so he backpedals.

“I mean, he didn't tell me anything, is the problem. Just that _something_. Just that something is going on with this dude that I can't get a read on. I want to know what I'm stepping in, here.”

Louis flags the server down for a fresh glass of water and then looks at Zayn, equal parts resigned and annoyed. “I invite you out for dinner and get bollixed for my trouble, that's it?”

“I've a right to know who I'm on a team with,” Zayn insists. “If there's a risk for me. If Niall's like, a rogue wild card or something, I deserve to know."

"God, no," Louis says, pinching his chop sticks together and stabbing them in Zayn's general direction. He's going to give up and switch to a fork in less than three minutes, Zayn wagers. "Nothing like that, calm down." He huffs and looks down at his plate, a bow of concentration to his lips, and Zayn knows he's caving.

“He sustained a bad injury a bit ago—”

“Wouldn't happen to be his knee, would it?”

Louis squints at him. “Right, yeah. Um, his knee. Well, that's like, there's a story there.”

Zayn feels a little exasperated. Why all the drama? “Out with it, Tomlinson.”

Louis sets down his chopsticks and picks up the provided fork from beside his plate instead. Zayn counts the win but stays focused. “The story is,” Louis hesitates, “... it was kind of our fault.”

Zayn tries with all his might to keep his reaction off his face, scooping some chicken up and chewing it determinedly for a moment before nodding at Louis. “Go on.”

“We were all on a job together—we've kind of been doing them together for a while, really, when I think about it. Anyway. He used to go into the field with us—decent lad out there, in fact. More than just your average techie,” he laughs, but it's brittle. “The last time he went, Liam was point, and I was on his six. We'd cased the joint obviously, but there was a pair of guards in place that weren't normally there. Anyway, long story short, Niall was shot.” Louis is talking like he's a zombie at this point, monotonous and void of any feeling—trying to remove himself from the situation. “Shattered his knee. He's had two surgeries and gone through, y'know. Months of physical therapy.”

The exceptionally flavorful food in Zayn's mouth turns to tasteless mush as he swallows. It makes no sense that Niall, following a point, was shot. That's the entire risk of running point—encountering danger before anyone else can, and Louis should have been in the position to cover. Something must have gone totally haywire, and by the way Louis won't look Zayn in the eye, he's willing to bet the guilt is weighing on them.

That's not good team dynamics. Guilt's not a good thing to have sit there, festering. It takes the sharp edge off intelligent minds; it makes people act with their hearts and not their heads. Zayn closes his eyes for a moment and thinks to himself, _This is why I prefer to work alone._

He gets home from dinner with Louis and still has the glass of Chianti and still reads the entire case file, but somehow doesn't stop thinking of Niall the entire evening until he eventually falls asleep.

︾

The next morning serves Zayn a dry throat from the wine and a bleary eye from the reading, and after he deposits his shit at his desk, he winds up in front of the tea cabinet. He's gazing longingly at the lemon ginger when Niall comes in.

“Morning,” he says.

Zayn clears his throat. “G'morning.” He watches as Niall begins to make a fresh pot of coffee—Zayn thinks of him staying overnight in his office and shudders—and then draws up his courage. “Is the lemon ginger yours?” he asks.

“Yes,” Niall says definitively, in the tone of someone who's had to defend his territory often. “The lemon ginger is mine.”

“Do you think I could borrow, er sorry, not really borrow—as you won't get it back—but, use, a bag?”

The way Niall shrugs and tells him to go for it has him wondering what all the stinking fuss was about until, as he goes to leave, he claps Zayn on the shoulder and says, low as if he's confiding it in him, “And thanks for asking, by the way.”

Much of the planning process for the job becomes communal, all of them alternating between their own specific research in their offices and sound boarding off each other in the conference room, pinning pertinent information to the draft board. Zayn tries to focus and get his head in the game, as he'll be going into the field at some point so he'll need to know it all, but for some reason every time he sits down at his computer, he just ends up swiveling and looking out at all the hubbub of London below him.

Finally, after Liam announces he's heading to his buddy's fabrication lab to get a 3D print of the Green & Schultz floor plan, Zayn realizes if he doesn't take affirmative action he won't get any work done. Too lazy to get up from his chair, he drafts a quick e-mail to Niall: _Might have to take you up on research assistance, if the offer is still on the table_. He re-reads it once and nods to himself before sending it off.

He remembers, of course, Niall's unenthusiastic response to Louis offering his help to Zayn, but it can't hurt to ask.

Less than a minute passes before Zayn gets a response: _course. give me a mo_. A couple minutes pass before he steps into Zayn's office, cup of fresh coffee in hand. His mouth is open to say something but he's stopped in his tracks, jaw agape. Zayn frowns and then follows his line of sight, and, oh.

“Is that the original?” Niall asks of the painting that Zayn had lugged in yesterday morning and hung, just because the empty whiteness of the space was starting to freak him out.

Zayn looks up at his replica of Magritte's “Le Chef D'Oeuvre ou Les Mysteres de L'Horizon” and then back to Niall with a wry smile. “Sadly not.”

“Jesus,” Niall breathes. Zayn wants to know what all Niall knows about Magritte, if anything at all; if he likes the Surrealists, if he likes art in general. Niall wanders up to it, hands clasped behind his back as if to prove he won't touch. Zayn appreciates that. “I mean, I'm obviously not an expert, but like. Could have fooled me.”

Zayn cradles his chin in his hand and watches Niall pore over it, feeling equal parts shy and flattered, a fast-paced thrumming in his chest. “That is the idea, after all.”

Niall casually glances over at him and then double takes, pointing from Zayn to the painting and back. “You...?”

Zayn raises one shoulder modestly. “I don't usually hang my own up, but I'm particularly fond of this one.”

It's the first time he hears Niall laugh. Not full-on, not like he's lost it or anything, just a disbelieving giggle, but it's still real. It makes his smile take over his face. “Jesus,” he says again. “I mean, I knew about you, of course, but like—” he mimes typing “—on paper. I didn't _know_ about you,” he finishes, with a grand gesture to the painting.

Now Zayn is blushing, probably, his face heating under the praise. He waves his hand. “Ideally, you're not supposed to know, right? That defeats the purpose.”

“Well, right,” Niall says. “But now I know why Louis wanted you.”

Zayn doesn't know what to make of that, so he ducks his head as Niall comes over and sets his laptop down. “Well, let's hope I can prove to be useful for the actual job, too.”

“Right, the job,” Niall says, visibly re-composing himself and sitting down in the chair across from Zayn. He opens his laptop and sets his hands atop the keyboard purposefully. “Are you ready to research patents?”

“As I'll ever be.”

“The trick of it is going to be that you need it to basically be an exact replica—so close they won't notice—but with an element altered enough so that when it goes to court, it won't be confirmed.”

Working alongside Niall is everything Zayn needs in a working relationship: Niall finds resources at lightning speed, collects data neatly, and shares the doc he's organizing everything in with Zayn.

(“Wait, how are we using a cloud right now?” Zayn asks, fingers freezing. “They aren't secure.”

“Did you hear all the fuss earlier this year about the Abacus Private Cloud?”

Zayn didn't. He was off the grid. In Burma. “Oh, yeah,” he says.

Niall nods. “I developed it.”)

They work in easy quiet, tempered by the music Zayn has playing at a low volume—which at first was classical, until Niall piped up saying, “You’ve anything that won't make me fall asleep?” and so now it's a cypher playlist—and he thinks it's all going quite well until Liam comes back and pokes his head in.

“Back from the fab lab already, Payno?” Niall says, tipping backwards in his chair and balancing it on two legs like a teenager. “That was quick.”

“It's been hours,” Liam says, and good lord, has it? Zayn blinks and suddenly feels how strained his eyes are.

“Well, yeah, but for a fabrication?”

“Oh, no,” Liam says, leaning inside the doorway. “I have to pick it up tomorrow, got bored waiting around. Only so many times I can hear that guy's stories.” He laughs, and Niall laughs, and then for ten minutes they gab back and forth, teasing each other and surmising about the job. Right in Zayn's office. The one giggle Zayn had gotten out of Niall, Liam gets ten times over effortlessly, and the half-awkward, politely-distant facade Niall's been using to keep Zayn at an arm’s length disappears. Which is only fair, technically, Liam's known Niall for ages.

Still. It's his office. And they aren't even talking to him.

He types a bogus subject line in an e-mail to no recipient extra loud, tapping forcefully. Liam jolts upright from the door, eyes wide, smacking his own forehead. “Oh gosh, sorry! I was actually meant to fetch you two for a debrief.”

“Finally,” Louis says when they arrive at the conference room. Harry is sat at the oval table with about 30 neon post-it notes surrounding him, and Zayn has no clue whether that's for the job or for Harry's own personal pleasure. “I was just about to come investigate, see if you died.”

“Sorry,” Liam says. “Lost track of time.”

They all take seats and Louis assumes his usual position. “Right, so, lads. Time to talk recon. Obviously since the firm is in Newcastle, plan on being out of town for a night. Harry's taking care of the travel.” He looks up. “Zayn, if I get you the specs on all our guises for recon today, is that enough time to get the references and ID's we'll need?”

Zayn drums his fingers against the tabletop while he thinks. “It'll have to be.”

“All right, I'll send those to you ASAP, and then you can cross-reference the ID's with Niall so he can get into the system and set up clearance for them.”

“Did anybody else notice the aerial view of the office looks like a man in glasses?” Harry asks out of the blue.

“I did, actually,” Niall says, “It looks like a bandit, I think.”

Harry disagrees. “No, more like a scientist.”

Louis looks across the room and makes aggrieved eye contact with Zayn.

“Are you quite finished, lads?” he asks. Harry writes _sorry_ on a post-it note and sticks it over his mouth, folding his hands in the perfect image of contrition. How did he save Zayn's life once?

The conversation takes a turn south when they start to soundboard who will do what for recon, and Niall makes a proposal that involves himself. Liam's hand freezes mid-sentence across his legal pad. 

“You're not going in, Niall.”

The silence that envelops them for a moment is oppressive, and Zayn looks down at his notes, feeling out of place. He has to pretend that he doesn't know Niall was ever injured.

Niall's voice is incredulous when he asks, “Says who?”

“Says me.”

“Sorry, I missed when you were put in charge of me personally.”

“I'm running the recon, I always run the recon.”

“There's no reason I can't go,” Niall says, an ever sharpening edge to his voice.

“It can turn just as dangerous as a mission.” Liam's steady, but Zayn can hear the way it pains him—to exclude Niall. 

Niall throws his pen down on the conference table in an uncharacteristic display of anger and it skitters all the way across and off onto the floor. “Stepping out my fucking front door can turn dangerous, Liam. Sleeping in my _bed_ can turn dangerous.” When Liam doesn't reply, he turns to Louis. “Are you going to do something about this?” he asks, and when Zayn chances a glance up at him, his hands are trembling.

Louis looks back and forth between them, for once hesitant to step into the middle of something. Eventually he clears his throat. “It's recon, Liam,” he says gently. “There's no reason he shouldn't know the layout of the building just as intimately as us. It'll help him when he's running tech.”

It's strange to hear Louis being reasonable instead of instigating, but Zayn guesses that's why he's the unspoken leader. Versatile when you wouldn't expect him to be.

Liam gets up from his seat and wanders down to the other end of the conference table, where the blueprints of the law firm are laid out. “Fine,” he says lowly. “But I want him in the safest place possible, raising the least amount of questions.”

“Zayn was going to pose as a master's program student to shadow an attorney,” Louis says, looking over at them. “Would it be all right to make it two students?”

“Fine with me,” Niall mutters, and Zayn wonders if the red in his cheeks is from anger or from embarrassment at having a scene made over him.

“How's your marksmanship?” Liam asks Zayn, his gaze intense where it falls across Zayn's face.

Zayn rolls his shoulders back, confident in his stats. He stares back. “Nearly perfect.”

“Lethal encounter proximity?”

Zayn grinds his teeth. He doesn't like to boast about being “lethal.” Most of the time, that's not his job. “I'm as lethal at a single meter as I am at forty.”

“Jesus Christ,” Niall swears. “My own marksmanship is fine, thanks.” He pushes his chair back and stands, running a hand through his hair. “I'll be in my office when you lot are done deciding who has to bloody babysit me.” He doesn't slam the door on his way out of the conference room, but the horrible tension in his wake is as good as.

Harry rolls his swivel chair down the table to Liam and nudges him. “Liam.”

Liam rubs his face, throat working against something unsaid. “Sorry,” he mutters at length. “It's just the first time, since, well...” he trails off. “You know.” He finally turns his head, mournful eyes catching Zayn's. “I didn't mean to throw you under, mate,” he apologizes. “S'pose I just. I dunno.” He's probably uncertain what all he can say to Zayn, unbeknownst of his conversation with Louis.

“It's okay,” Zayn says. “I don't need to know.” But he does know, and he gets it. They came up together, went rogue together. Liam was point and Niall got shot on his watch. It's a lot. This is why Zayn likes to work alone. “I agree my route is going to be the safest. Also, he could pull off master's program student easier than all of us, I think.”

A hint of relief clears Liam's cloudy expression a bit. “That's true, very true,” he says. “It's the face, always had a baby face.”

“So that's settled, then?” Louis asks tentatively.

“Yeah,” Liam sighs. “Let's take five.” He loosens his tie and looks up at the ceiling, considering. “Actually, make it ten, I've some apologizing to do.”

Since the debrief has dissolved, Zayn makes his way back to his office and starts to prepare information for his forges. About an hour later, Niall pops his head in the door. “Hey.”

Zayn turns away from his monitor set up. “All right?”

Niall doesn't come all the way in, only hovers at the threshold and rubs the back of his neck. “Just wanted to say sorry for earlier. Wasn't very professional.”

Zayn cracks a small grin, not because he found it funny, but because he doesn't want Niall to think he's judging him. “No worries,” he says. “I once worked a job for a married couple. No fights will ever match theirs.”

Niall studies his shoes. “I'm sure it was confusing, but just. Liam and I have gone through a lot together so.”

“Yeah.” Zayn decides to show a few of his cards. “He told me you were in the military together. I get it, mate.”

Niall doesn't look surprised or upset, just absorbs the information and nods. “Yeah. That's basically, yeah.” He wavers in the door, stepping an inch further out into the hallway. “Just wanted to like, y'know. Apologize. And let you know it's been sorted and all that.”

“No worries,” Zayn repeats, softer this time.

Niall shoves his hands in his back pockets. “Cool, thanks. I—I'm pissing off for the night, so. See ya tomorrow.”

Zayn raises his hand in regards. “See you then.” He listens to the sound of Niall's footsteps as he retreats down the hallway, the sound of the suite’s glass doors swishing open and shut.

︾

After that, the job seems to become this autonomous being that gathers them up for the ride, rolling them in and out of the tide of work. Liam gets the 3D model from the fab lab and he and Louis spend days strategizing at least two routes for each of them—one main, one back up—and two different emergency exit plans for the entire team. In the weeks before recon, Zayn forges ID's for three of them at different levels of security and spoofs the e-mail address of an Oxford professor to request permission that two of his “master's program students” shadow a patent attorney, meaning that all five of them will disperse once inside the law firm to learn the various parts of it.

London to Newcastle isn’t a long journey but Harry gets them a private jet anyway, and then arranges five separate vehicles for the return trip. Liam acquires them all firearms, simple little things designed to be discreet but effective, and under-armor. He pulls them aside one at a time to the shooting range, making sure each of them are up to par. Niall hacks into Green & Schultz’s security system and codes each of their ID's into the specific clearance levels. It's an awful lot to happen in two weeks, and at the end of it, Zayn's exhausted by the time they board the jet.

Harry has a gimmicky pilot jacket and aviators on as he settles into the cockpit. Zayn isn't sure how he's certified to fly a fucking jet but can't even manage one decent pun over the PA system, but alas. The flight is only going to take forty-five minutes but he still snatches the opportunity to sleep, reclining his seat as soon as they're airborne and curling just the slightest bit towards the window, drifting off in minutes. When he wakes it's to the tips of Niall's fingers on his shoulder, like he's afraid to fully touch him and accidentally startle him. “Zayn,” he's saying. “We've landed.”

“Right,” Zayn croaks, licking his lips, chapped from the recycled air of the jet. “Thanks.” He pulls himself upright, tries to smooth the wrinkles out of his shirt and steps into the aisle. He blinks when he realizes Niall is waiting further down, holding Zayn's overnight bag out to him from where he's fetched it out of the overhead compartment. “Oh, thanks,” Zayn says again, trying to ignore how his arm is asleep as he reaches out to take the bag.

“No problem,” Niall says. “You look knackered.”

Zayn clocks Niall's dark under eye circles and slips the bag over his shoulder. “Aren't we all?”

That earns him a slight grin. “Point.”

As if on cue: “Lads!” Louis calls back into the jet. “Let's go, I have a plush hotel bed to pass out in!”

Harry drives them from the private airport to the hotel, Louis utilizing the time for a final debrief. “Okay, one last time, just to make sure everyone has it.”

“I'll be there midnight to six a.m. to surveil the security,” Harry says.

Niall intones dutifully, “Zayn and I are shadowing nine to five.”

“And Liam checks in at two with Louis to inspect a plumbing issue,” Liam speaks in the third person.

“Excellent,” Louis says, and then doles out the keys to their vehicles, all while he double checks that everyone has their travel folders for the return.

The hotel is excessively swanky for a less-than-24-hour stay, but Zayn's not complaining. At least, he's not complaining until he hits the silk sheets and then tosses and turns for over an hour, too restless to fall asleep. He huffs, staring at the moon through the slatted blinds, and then gives up. Rising, he dresses in a simple undershirt and the pair of trousers he brought for his student guise, grabs his keycard off his dresser and heads for the hotel bar.

What he doesn't expect is to find Niall and Louis there as well, shoulder to shoulder and watching whatever program is on the telly above the bar.

“Thank god,” Louis says when he catches sight of Zayn. He stands and makes a show out of stretching his arms over his head. “Someone else can keep the insomniac company, I'm going to bed.”

Niall scoffs into his pint glass. “You say that like I asked you to stay, Lou.”

“Yeah, well.” Louis tousles Niall's hair as he makes to leave. “Don't stay up much later, you two.”

“Thanks mom,” Zayn calls after him. Louis flips him the bird over his shoulder. Zayn wanders up to Niall, pulling a stool out next to him. “Hello.”

“Hey,” Niall giggles, a touch of hysteria to it that Zayn is going to put down to the hour of night.

The bartender comes over and Zayn waits until his Jameson on the rocks is in front of him before speaking again. “Can't sleep?”

“Almost never can at first, when I travel.”

Zayn sips his drink. “I usually can, but. Not tonight, for whatever reason.”

Niall shrugs. “As master's students presumably at the end of our wits, the sleep deprivation will work in our favor.”

Zayn smiles ruefully. “That's one way to look at it.”

Niall raises his pint in a feeble cheers. “Stay on the sunny side.” A moment of silence passes between them, comfortable in the dim light of the bar. Zayn fingers the napkin his drink is sitting on, the condensation seeping through it. Niall licks his lips. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“Piss off,” Niall laughs. “I'm being serious.”

Zayn takes a drink to brace himself. “All right.”

“About the painting. The Magritte.”

“Le Chef d'Oeuvre.”

“Right. Why that one?”

“What do you mean?”

Niall shrugs. “Just curious. When people talk about Magritte, that's not usually the first painting they bring up.”

Zayn wants to know when Niall has ever talked to people about Magritte. Zayn wants to know what paintings he _has_ talked about. Instead he rips off the corner of his damp napkin, thinking of how much to disclose before—maybe thanks to the whiskey—he decides to go for broke.

“One of the few things I've ever painted for myself,” he says, parsing the words out carefully. “I was in a bit of a dark spot, I guess. Took a job, went well but got into a bit of—a bit of a scrape myself.” Meaning, he recalls, an hour of being beat to shit by hired muscle before his teammates found him and took them out. “Needed a vacation after it. Needed to paint. S'what I actually went to school for, once upon a time.”

“Knew that,” Niall says, casual as anything, and Zayn frowns. “I... I like to research anyone I get into business with. So, I mean. Of course, your time at The Royal Academy is on the record.”

It's not unusual for people to run background on each other, so Zayn isn't too perturbed, but he still feels a little caught off-guard. “What else is on the record?”

Niall holds out his hand to count them off on his fingers. “Born in Bradford; The Royal Academy; suspected as co-conspirator alongside one Louis Tomlinson in the case of the 2010 theft from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, but never arrested. Oh, and you never returned The Lord of the Rings trilogy to your secondary school library.”

“Wow,” Zayn says. “That's it?”

“You asked what was on the record,” Niall says. “I know a lot more; that's just what there are documents of.”

Zayn side-eyes him. “Pretty creepy.”

“C'mon.” Niall reaches up to rub one eye. “You didn't creep on the rest of us?”

“Not really,” Zayn admits. “I've known the other lads for awhile, actually. Did some digging on them when we first met, of course, but. Haven't needed to in years.”

“I forget that. That I'm the only one you didn't know, before.”

“Yeah. I started to do more and more solo work, so. You must have entered the circus while I was gone.”

“Is that a John le Carré reference?”

“No,” Zayn giggles, delighted. “We’re not exactly MI6. But I love that you thought so.” 

“I hated that _Tinker Tailor_ film.” Niall finishes the dregs of his pint and Zayn can see him consider another before he decides against it, pushing the glass up to the edge of the bar to be taken away. “Well, we can level the playing field, if you're feeling slighted.”

“Hm?” 

“Ask me whatever you want to know, I guess.”

Zayn chases a drop of liquid around the rim of his glass with a finger. “How did you end up in the English military with Liam?”

“Dual citizenship,” Niall says, holding up two fingers. “My parents split when I was still just a twinkle in me mum's eye. She moved to England and had me here. Spent my summers on an Irish farm with my da.”

“Seems pretty unpatriotic, given the history between our countries.”

Niall shrugs. “Wasn't really thinking about it, to be honest. Never really thought about, like, actually going to war. Just needed something to do. Thought I might as well join up, finish it out, get a music bursary for university at the end of it. The English military offers better benefits than the Irish Army.”

“You wanted to do music?” Zayn asks, shocked at Niall's silent nod. “When did the tech bit happen?”

Niall smiles. “Oh, that was always there. Always tinkered with stuff as a kid. We had a computer in the house sooner than most other families, because my mum worked with them. So, yeah. Then I specialized in it for the military. Blah blah.”

“It's not blah blah,” Zayn says, nudging Niall with his elbow. “I'm interested.”

“That's why I like that painting,” he says, out of the blue. “The Magritte? It's the mysteries of the horizon. I've always kind of felt like that. Like I have no idea what's coming.”

Something tightens in Zayn's throat. He kills the last of his drink, watered down at this point, and pushes the empty glass up. “That's why I painted it,” he confesses.

“After the job?”

“Yeah. And now it kind of just, like. Serves as a reminder, right? That nothing is for certain.”

“The only thing that is for certain, is that nothing is,” Niall says in a tone of agreement. He looks up at Zayn, eyes dark in the low light. “Paradox.”

︾

The morning comes sooner than Zayn would like, but it's not as if anyone ever working a heist is well-rested and energetic. He knows, at least, as they convene in the parking garage, that Niall is feeling it too. They hadn't drunk any more last night but their conversation had gone on for stupidly long, Zayn peeling back one layer of him at a time, glimpsing something new and fascinating with every topic they covered.

“Look at us,” Niall says. “Two uni students.”

Zayn thinks Niall actually looks more like a spy now than he usually does, in a button-up and pair of pressed chinos, but keeps that to himself.

“Let me fix your tie,” he says, reaching out to snag it.

“Never wear ties,” Niall gripes, staying still for Zayn as he undoes Niall's clumsy knot and redoes it with the ease of rote memorization.

“I've noticed,” he says. “Makes you look so mature.” He sticks his tongue out, a gentle tease. Niall smiles and shoves him playfully before turning to unlock his car, and Zayn sets off for his own.

“Race ya!” Niall calls before getting in.

“No!”

The recon goes about as seamlessly as one could hope. The attorney Niall and Zayn are shadowing is horrifically monotonous and long-winded, with the tendency of repeating himself to the point where Zayn—who doesn't normally suffer violent impulses—almost wrestles his briefcase from him and beats him with it.

Before that can happen, amazingly, Zayn is given £30 and told to go buy them lunch. Pretending to be enthused and grateful, he actually does end up getting them lunch, but that venture only takes fifteen minutes; he spends at least forty poking around various corridors, flashing his visitor badge to anyone who looks at him sideways. When he gets back all he has to do is smile sheepishly and apologize.

“Got lost,” he says, feigning contrite embarrassment. “Not from ‘round here, like.”

The attorney waves him off and tells them to take a ten minute break to eat.

The ingenious thing of it is that since they're “students,” no one bats an eyelash at all the notes they're taking. Except instead of notes on different types of patent lawsuits, they're marking down personnel and where the cameras are and which rooms nobody ever goes in. The attorney gives them a tour of the entire organization, cluelessly aiding them in their research.

They get a mass text from Harry that he's back in London, which Zayn discreetly checks and then shows to Niall when the attorney steps into the loo. Niall squints to read the text and then mimes cheering. Zayn grins and hopes the day is going as easily for Louis and Liam.

Throughout the day, Zayn catches himself looking at Niall when he should be looking at anything else. It isn't specific, either, just pointless gazing, finding himself musing about how sharp Niall's profile is. How different he looks under the office lights as opposed to the soft warm lights of the bar last night. What he'd be like to paint. Zayn imagines that—sitting down to paint Niall, as he hasn't thought about anybody else in years, and feels his face heat up. He shakes his head. _Get it the fuck together_ , he tells himself. _You are a god damned international spy._ Niall gives a soft, questioning hum from beside him, lightly touching the small of Zayn’s back. When Zayn turns, Niall’s peering at him curiously. 

Actually, it occurs to him that Niall’s been catching him looking all afternoon. Which means he’s looking back, right?

_Nothing_ , Zayn mouths to him. It's nothing. 

At five o'clock, the attorney gives them his business card and tells them to follow-up with any questions. They thank him profusely and even bid a sweet adieu to the security guard on the way out. In the car park, Niall's not even all the way into his car before he's ripping his tie off. “That was the most boring day of my entire life,” he says, wrestling the knot out and starting in on the buttons of his shirt. Zayn's not sure whether he's planning on making the return journey in the nude or not. “That's who we're trusting our intellectual property with?”

“Old, boring, white dudes,” Zayn says, checking his phone to see texts from Louis and Liam that they'd made it inside okay. “That's all the legal system is, don't you know?”

Niall laughs. “Do I ever.” He opens his car door to toss his tie and folder of notes onto the passenger seat. “See you back in London, mate, don't get fucking lost.”

︾

Turns out recon ends up going off without a hitch for everyone, which makes Zayn a little nervous—like how a smooth dress rehearsal for a theatre production is bad luck—but he keeps the anxiety to himself and focuses his efforts on the final stages of planning. Between the five of them, they managed to gather loads of vital information that all just needs sorting through, and the first couple of days back from Newcastle are relentlessly busy.

The plus side is that Louis checks in with Sangeeta and Patrick to confirm progress of the mission and they receive an advance in payment. Zayn shuts the door to his office and opens a spreadsheet to dole out the amounts between his parents and sisters. It's not like there won't be a lavish amount left over for himself, it's just that he's never understood the flash mentality of some people in their profession. Yachts are nice, he guesses, but taking care of people is better.

︾

He finally gets a night of relative calm, where he has the forgery of the entire patent pretty much done save for minor tweaks. There are full eight hours in between now and when he has to wake up again, and he hasn't brought a thing home from the office except his gun. He flicks the line on his stove and takes odd bits of this and that out of his fridge; things that he has left over from take out, things that he grocery shopped and then forgot about. He ends up piecing together a prawn stir fry he's pretty proud of, eats it standing at his counter top while flipping through the pages of a magazine.

He considers a round on his X-box, maybe check if Danny is online, but the thought is interrupted when his phone buzzes. Frowning, he picks it up and sees an incoming message from Niall.

It's a picture of the moon, in waxing crescent. _just like Magritte's_ is the caption, no punctuation, no emoji, no signature. Just that Niall saw the moon and thought of “Le Chef D'Oeuvre” and then thought of Zayn. Thought that Zayn should know about it.

_I never know what's coming_ , Zayn remembers the way the words sounded in Niall's mouth. He crosses to the nearest window and peers through curtains, up at the same moon Niall snapped a photo of approximately a minute ago.

He stands there in his kitchen, barefoot and a little sleepy, and carefully taps out three different responses that he trashes, nothing sounding clever or sharp enough. Eventually he decides against responding altogether.

Instead, he wanders through the flat to his room, shedding his clothes as he goes. When he lies down, the cool sheets feel amazing, and he takes a minute to just properly appreciate his bed as he hasn’t in weeks. Then, unbidden, he thinks of Niall. Perched before his painting with his hands clasped behind his back, leaning closer in utter wonder. Zayn sucks his lower lip into his mouth for a moment, then reaches his hand down to push his briefs off his hips.

He jerks himself off, rolling his head back and thinking of Niall's eyes, so clear and wide when he figured out Zayn had painted the Magritte. Niall's eyes, darker under the bar lights and shiny from alcohol, the sheen of his beer on his lips. Niall dressed as a uni student at Green & Schultz, when he'd intuited Zayn's distress and silently asked if he was okay. Zayn thinks of Niall, at home—or maybe still at work—looking up and seeing the waxing crescent. Wherever, not that long ago, Niall looked out his window and thought of Zayn. Maybe he's still looking out the window and thinking of Zayn right now. 

Zayn sighs as he palms the wet head of his dick and relinquishes all pretense.

When he comes, it's because he hears his own ruined moan when he thinks of undoing Niall's horribly knotted tie and kissing the column of his throat, pale as the crescents Zayn had painted once as he'd questioned his entire future.

He wipes the tack of his come off on a tissue from his bedside table and thinks, _Well. All right._

︾

It's stupid, he thinks in the morning. It's one painting. It's one artist they happen to share a mutual admiration of.

But it isn't really just that. It's also that Niall wanted to go to university for music once, and it's that he stays up late nights coding instead of sleeping, that he spent summers in the Irish countryside with his dad. It's that Niall is possessive of his lemon ginger tea but let Zayn have some, that he sustained a potentially career-ending injury and then went back to work anyway, that he sat down with Zayn to research patents and requested something livelier than the demure classical music he'd had on. It's that Niall knew what synthetic biomarkers were and who Sangeeta Bhatia is and more than one of Magritte's works.

“Stop it,” Zayn says aloud to himself as he pours his tea into a to-go mug and leaves for work. When he was a teenager, his mom had taught him to start doing math in his head when he was nervous and needed a distraction, so that's how Zayn finds himself on the tube at 7:30AM aggressively solving for X using the Pythagorean Theorem instead of Niall.

Louis calls them to order in the conference room first thing. “Okay lads, we're getting down to the wire. Where are we at?” He points to Harry first.

“Same travel arrangements all made—jet there, cars out. I've set up safe house locations for all of us, probably stay down for a week at the minimum.”

Harry passes off to Niall, who runs a hand through his hair before he begins. “I'll be stationed outside in an armored vehicle—thanks Harry—totally plugged in. I'll need to fit you all for in-ears today so we can have them back to us by next week. I'll have us all on a secure, private channel. Remember to talk to me as much as you can, within reason obviously. I’ll be on the cams, seeing you and everything, but I’ll need your verbal cues to scramble signals and unlock doors.”

“Which leads us to the plan itself,” Louis says, pausing to let them all flip through their books to the blueprints. “Right, the nitty gritty.”

“Harry will deploy us at the northern entrance at 4:05AM. Quietest entrance out of all three, and the only one secluded from street view. It’s the same three guards on from ten at night to six in the morning, so they’re pretty tired at this point but we still have two hours until new guards refresh them.” 

“I’ll have the car park cams fixed, of course, so they don’t see you pull up.” Niall says. “To get in the doors requires breaking the triple-action lock. Since it’s controlled electronically, I can pre-set the locks to be open for a window of about thirty seconds.”

Louis nods. He takes out a marker and makes an ‘X’ on his copy on the board. “Once we get in, down this corridor is the first guard we’ll encounter. She takes a break every two hours at five minutes past, hence our arrival time.” 

“Behind her desk is a door that you’ll just need to swipe your badges to get through, they’ll be set for clearance,” Niall explains. “Afterward I can wipe the log, so no one notices unusual activity.”

“From there, we’re lucky. There aren’t any motion sensors, and just two other interior guards.” Louis marks one ‘X’ on the second floor and one on the basement level. “We’ve narrowed down the places the patent might be to three locations, so unfortunately we’ll have to split up, each of us taking a copy of the fake.” He notes a ‘ZM’ on the top level, a ‘LT’ on the mid, and ‘LP’ in the basement. “The first possibility is Green’s office,” he says, tapping Zayn’s initials. “That’ll be you, Malik. He’ll have a safe of some sort, of course, it’ll just take you time to find it, I suspect.”

“Whatever it ends up being, just talk to me,” Niall says. “I’ll walk you through it.” Zayn nods, more or less unbothered. He’s gone into much scarier situations with less information than that.

Louis moves down to his own initials. “The second possibility is the records room on the mid level, which the blueprints show to include a vault. I do believe that the large and quite tacky Renaissance painting on the southeast wall is covering it, because Philip Green is a walking cliché. Luckily, I have quite a bit of experience cracking vaults, so hopefully I won’t be tying up your airwaves, Niall.” 

“That leaves you, Payne,” he continues, dragging his marker as a pointer along the baseline of the basement’s prints. Liam lifts his hands in a cheer. “The storage room. Who knows what the fuck all is in there—could be anything. Narnia. Fountain of youth. Room of requirement. The blueprints aren’t helpful beyond telling us there are no windows and no other entrances.”

“The room does require a fingerprint to get in, though,” Niall says. “Which is suspicious. It’s the only room that does. Which is like, what are they trying to hide? So the fingerprint is where this gets tricky.” 

“Do I get to disarm a guard and use his thumb?” Liam asks, perking up. 

“I mean… as long as you’re excited by this prospect… ” Louis says.

“Please,” Niall sighs. “Nothing excites Liam more than physical confrontation.” 

“Right,” Louis says. “Well then. We’ll just pack you a bottle of Chloroform and send you off, hm?”

“No way,” Zayn says, teasing. “Nobody uses that anymore.”

“Just testing you,” Louis sniffs. “Obviously I’ll give him a syringe of etorphine.” 

“ _Obviously_ ,” Niall says.

“I feel like we’re sending Liam to certain death,” Harry says, face screwed up in concern.

“No,” Louis says. “We’re sending Liam to the storage room. Easy to confuse the two, I know, but they’re different. Besides, out of all of us, he’s the most capable of manhandling a guard.”

“Aw, thanks, Lou,” Liam says. “Think you just complimented me.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.” 

“Anyway,” Niall says. “This is why it’s so imperative you all keep talking on the radios. We need to know what you’re encountering as you go, if you need one of the others to peel off and come help you. And also, who ends up finding the fucking patent.”

“Which brings us to the exit strategy,” Louis says.

“Je-suuuuus,” Liam whines, slouching in his chair. “Will we ever get to just run the fucking job?”

︾

The night before the heist, Zayn sits down at his kitchen table in his rented flat and disassembles his gun. With a bright light overhead, he cleans each part of it meticulously, methodically, picking his tools like a scientist from his silver kit. At first it’s unnerving, having it laid out in front of him, the magazine full of ammunition. But by the end of it, as he’s putting it back together, he’s completely at peace; the quiet of his surroundings and his honed focus lulling him into sense of tranquility.

He remembers the first time he held a gun instead of a paintbrush. How, after that, each principle he’d learned for art rapidly acquired an espionage equivalent. 

His professor had referred him to Shahid Khan for mentorship—to learn the ropes, so to speak. Khan taught him how to hold a gun, how to load it, fire it, and at the end of the day, how to break it apart and clean it.

Now, it’s the only way he sleeps before a mission.

︾

At 4:04AM, he steps out of the murdered out Range Rover behind Louis and Liam with purpose. He waves over his shoulder to Harry, who flashes him a thumbs up. He hears Louis radio to Niall, “We’re out.”

“Thirty seconds starting now, lads,” Niall says, crisp accent so loud in Zayn’s ear he winces and reaches up to turn it down a notch. He keeps hot on Liam’s heels as he leads them up the curb and to the front of the building, opening the door just the fraction it takes to slip inside. 

The dark and quiet of Green & Schultz are almost eerie as the three of them immediately press against the wall, Liam first, Louis next, and Zayn bringing up the rear. He adjusts his grip on his gun, pointed at the floor as they steal down the corridor in silence. 

The guard desk is empty and Liam flashes his badge in front of the sensor to open the next door. Once they’re through, it snicks shut behind them definitively, and Louis corrals them into the nearest corner of the identical hallway they’re in. “Okay,” he whispers. Zayn holsters his gun. “Wait for Niall’s cue. You two have your copies of the patent?” Liam and Zayn nod.

“The interior guard on Payne’s level is on the opposite side of the building,” Niall buzzes in. “If you go now you can have about a minute to prepare yourself.” 

“Roger,” Liam whispers, patting both Zayn and Louis on their backs as he moves to leave them. Somehow he manages to make tucking into the wall and scuttling along look graceful. Fucking military. Zayn rolls his shoulders, keeping his gaze a flight around the room as they wait. He doesn’t see or hear Liam disappear from the corridor, just glances back in his direction to find him no longer there.

A moment later, he comes through, a crackly whisper. “On the lower level, in position.” 

“Malik it’s time to fly,” Niall says, not a second later. “You got your stairs?”

“All good,” Zayn says, touching Louis’ shoulder as he goes. “See you on the other side.” 

“See you,” Louis says, attention vigilant as a hawk as he keeps his eyes flickering between the doors. Zayn doesn’t look back as he pivots and moves swiftly for the adjacent entrance to the stairwell. He’s not up more than half a dozen steps when he hears Louis receive his own cue from Niall, and just like that, they’re dispersed. 

He’s done this hundreds of times at this point, and he’s still not used to this feeling, right here at the beginning of the game. The plunge into sheer adrenaline. His heart feels like it’s caught in the back of his throat, and it makes him even lighter on his feet than he could ever train to be. He’s up the remaining stairs in a flash.

“Malik here,” he whispers, pausing just before the door that will take him out of the stairwell and into the hall of Green’s office. “Do you have eyes on me, Horan?”

“Don’t move,” Niall says. “The guard doubled back instead of making his usual loop.”

“Staying,” Zayn breathes, dropping his hand from the door knob and pressing himself back into the wall. He cranes his neck and finds the camera right away. If he were feeling more assured, he’d wave at Niall. 

But Niall patches through to Liam next. “On my count, Payno,” he says, though Zayn’s sure Liam can hear the footsteps. 

“Remember, the jugular,” Louis pipes up for the first time since he confirmed making it inside the records room. 

“I’m not a fucking a novice,” Liam hisses back in the same breath that Niall begins to count down from ten. 

Zayn’s sure that no matter where he is, Louis is as frozen as he is as they wait to hear Niall reach the end of his count-down and the ensuing aftermath. Since the mics are hands-free, they all pick up on the noise from the scuffle: the cut-off yelp of the guard before Liam gets a hand over his mouth; the way Liam swears low under his breath as he executes whatever maneuver necessary to gain the upperhand—a wicked choke hold, maybe. Zayn experienced that one firsthand the one time he trained with Liam. Then a full minute ticks by without anything, until Liam comes back in, stymying his shallow pant to say, “Down. Going in.” 

“Back to you Malik,” Niall says without missing a beat. “Looks like your guard is heading for the break room, so you’re golden.”

“Cheers,” Zayn says, letting himself out of the stairwell just as cautiously as he would have if the guard was still on the floor. 

It’s only after he’s swiped himself into Green’s office and dropped down beneath the pretentious, massive oak desk to feel the floor out for a trapdoor that he feels the unmistakable feel of a cold pistol muzzle pressed to the nape of his neck and realizes he is not, in fact, golden at all.

“Get up,” snaps a raspy voice, and Zayn wouldn’t doubt if it’s so soft his mic won’t pick it up. “Slowly.” 

“Well that vault was bloody child’s play,” Louis says archly, oblivious. “Nothing in it.” Everyone’s oblivious. 

The muzzle presses harder into Zayn’s skin. He can feel the very real edges of the barrel, of the spring plug. It’s no bluff. 

But forfeit is not Zayn’s game, either. In his ear, Liam’s talking about what he’s found in the storage room, which could be weapons of mass destruction for all that Zayn is paying attention. 

He raises his hands up, as he would to surrender, and shifts back as though he’s getting ready to stand. The pressure of the gun eases just the slightest, whoever’s behind him making room for him to rise. Instead, he takes that split-second to grab the edge of the desk and spin, left knee taking his weight as he lunges his right leg out to kick his attacker.

Turns out they weren’t anticipating obedience in the first place, because with reflexes faster than Zayn’s, they evade the kick and retaliate with their own. When their foot comes smashing into Zayn’s face, he has one thought that stands out against the burst of pain: _That’s a fucking stiletto._

Zayn can’t help the way he crumples a bit, ricocheting back off the desk and onto the floor. He must make a noise audible enough for Niall to catch because he checks in. “Malik?” 

Zayn can’t answer. Facing up at his attacker now, he catalogs what he can see of them as fast as he can. Petite, probably 5’5” even in the heels, slender, and thanks to the backlight Zayn can see some sort of neon color in the frizzy mane of hair. Green, he thinks. “Ah, ah,” the voice tsks, and as the body moves, the shadows cede enough for him to make out some facial features. High cheekbones, dark lips. “One chance to behave, or I blow your brains out,” the lips say, unsmiling. 

“Malik, do you copy?” Niall says again. 

Zayn breathes out slowly through his nose, trying to regain composure. He can’t let her know there’s a receiver in his ear. “Who are you?” he asks, trying to think if there’s a subtle way to get his gun out. 

“Fucking _shit_ ,” Niall swears, and Zayn swallows. He knew that would tip them off. And then: “No, Tomlinson!” Niall barks. “Don’t fucking move. Your guard is right outside your door.”

“Who cares,” Louis snaps back. “I can break his neck in two seconds.” 

_Don’t be fucking stupid, _Zayn wants to scream, but he works on devoting his attention to the deceptively lethal person in front of him, who he thinks rolled her eyes at his question.__

__“Like I’m going to tell you. I have the gun, see? I ask the questions.”_ _

__If he can get her talking and keep her going, he might be able to get his gun out of his thigh holster. Maybe. He needs her to move into the light so she’ll cast a shadow over him._ _

__“All right,” he says, affecting the calmest tone he can muster. “You’re the boss.”_ _

__She sniffs but doesn’t move. “What are you here for?”_ _

__(In his ear, Louis is going mad. “I’m going up there,” he says._ _

__“No, you’re not,” Niall says. “If either of you move, I swear I’ll lock every door in the entire building.”_ _

__“Fuck you,” Louis says, flat and harsh with the slightest tremble to the edge of it, the way he goes when he’s truly incensed._ _

__“Give me five minutes,” Niall says._ _

__Louis snarls, “You have three.”)_ _

__There’s a growing warm patch along the collar of Zayn’s shirt, sticking against his neck, that he realizes is blood dripping from his cheek and pooling there. Great. Nothing like melodrama._ _

__Past experience has taught Zayn that there’s not much point in lying, in these types of situations, not if he wants to avoid gruesome field surgery afterward. There’re selective things he would lie about: who he’s with, who hired him, etc. Lies that would protect other people. But the patent is a commodity—anybody could be after it._ _

__“I’m just here for a little old patent,” he says slowly, blinking. “Are we a match?”_ _

__The woman cocks her head. “Which patent?”_ _

__So Green’s made a habit out of patent theft, then. Interesting._ _

__“Stall,” Niall directs in his ear. “I just need one minute.”_ _

__“Synthetic biomarkers,” Zayn says._ _

__“Great stalling,” Louis quips, sounding quite frightened despite the snark._ _

__The woman cocks her gun. “Ding, ding, ding,” she whispers._ _

__Zayn scrambles for purchase in this conversation. “Can I ask you one thing?” A pause. “I checked the entire room before I started. Where were you?”_ _

__The woman smiles, dark lips parting to reveal gleaming teeth. “In the ceiling.”_ _

__Zayn doesn’t know if he’s pandering or truly impressed when he raises his eyebrows and says, “Next level.”_ _

__“That’s nice, dear,” she says, and then reaches out one hand, palm open and fingers beckoning. “Now go on, give it.”_ _

__It’s a struggle, but Zayn just manages to keep the confusion off his face._ _

__“She thinks he has the fucking patent,” Liam finally speaks, a harsh hush that tells Zayn he’s still hiding somewhere._ _

__“Malik, if you have any physical leverage whatsoever, ask her a question next. If you’re at her mercy, give her the fake,” Niall tells him, his voice returned to an even keel that helps Zayn focus._ _

__He thinks having a gun in his face would normally constitute as being at someone’s mercy, but he leans his weight back against the desk just the slightest bit and takes a risk. “What makes you think I should hand it over?” he asks._ _

__“Roger,” Niall says, reading the cue. “In about ten seconds, you’ll want to cover your face.”_ _

Everything that happens in the following series of moments is a complete blur, but this is what Zayn knows: the arch floor-to-ceiling window directly behind his assailant shatters, he gets showered with glass, and through it all he can still hear the soft _thwip_ of a silencer. There’s a ragged, wet gasp, a thump, and when Zayn lowers the arm he’d raised across his face instinctively, the scene that greets him nearly stops his heart in his chest. 

Niall, in rappelling gear, standing over the woman with his gun drawn, surrounded by a rain of broken glass—each shard reflecting the car park flood lights outside. 

__“What the _fuck_ is going on?!” Louis is screeching over the radio. Zayn thinks everyone definitely knows they’re here now. _ _

__“Where did you come from?” Zayn asks, dazed._ _

__“The roof,” Niall says, though that much is at least obvious. “As if Harry and I would _actually_ leave you goons off-site.” He’s preoccupied as he talks, kneeling down to the unconscious woman. Zayn sees, suddenly, where Niall shot through her shoulder, the wound oozing blood sluggishly. “I know this one,” he says. “Asami Zdrenka.”_ _

__“Niall?” Zayn says, because he has no idea what’s going on, and his arm is starting to feel like it’s on fire. He looks down at it and wow, that’s. That’s a bit of blood, actually._ _

__“Just one second, Zayn,” Niall says. “I promise.” He’s ripped a bandage out of a pack at his side and is pressing it over the wound in Asami’s shoulder, taping it tight in four quick motions. “The Jungle gets to keep their tiger,” he mutters, and then rises and moves towards Zayn._ _

__“I’m here, I’m taking Malik, he’s fine,” Niall finally bothers to clarify over the air. Zayn can’t even make sense of the jumble in his ear anymore. Liam and Louis are just white noise. “Styles is waiting two blocks northwest of here for you two. Follow the pre-set exit strategy—the two conscious guards are locked in the front hall together.”_ _

__“Hi,” Zayn says._ _

__Niall offers him a crooked grin. “Hello. We need to leave now, up you get.” He reaches down to offer Zayn his arm, but Zayn shakes his head._ _

__“The patent.”_ _

__“Louis has the patent.”_ _

__“Oh,” Zayn says. He missed that. He gets as good of a grip on Niall’s proffered forearm as he can, then, and lugs himself up. He shifts his gaze between the rope clipped onto Niall and the window, and then up to Niall’s face. “Are we going out the fucking window?”_ _

__Niall’s hand comes up to grip the nape of his neck. “‘Fraid so, mate.”_ _

__Zayn shakes his head.“Melodrama.”_ _

__They make their way to the edge of the room, wavering where the window gapes, now, empty of its pane. “You’ll have to hold on,” Niall says, gesturing to himself. “It’s just a short drop. Two flights.” He turns so his back is to the vacant car park, stepping gradually out of the window so that the soles of his boots fit over the jut of it. He leans back, letting the rope take his weight, and then opens his arms._ _

__Sighing, Zayn gingerly wraps himself around Niall, ankles hooking behind his back and elbows going over his shoulders. He shuts his eyes. “Ready.”_ _

__“Blast off,” Niall says, kicking out from the window and letting out his slack, repelling down the side of the building pretty smoothly, all things considered. They hit the ground before Zayn even has time to think about how close they’re pressed together. Zayn stumbles to relieve Niall of his weight, who stands steady like he’s done this a dozen times._ _

__“The van’s right behind you,” Niall tells him, helping to turn him in the right direction, guide him to the waiting van._ _

__“Where’s all your gadgets?” Zayn asks, frowning, as he peers into the back seat._ _

__“Told ya,” Niall says. “We were on the roof.”_ _

__“I do not understand _anything_ ,” Zayn slurs, increasingly exhausted and frustrated at the same time. _ _

__“I’ll explain later.” Niall reaches over with two handfuls of gauze. “I know you know basic first aid, Malik, c’mon. You apply pressure, I’ll drive.”_ _

__“Yeah, all right,” Zayn mumbles, numbly spreading the gauze over his left arm with his right hand as Niall starts the engine and lays on the gas, the campus of Green & Schultz peeling away._ _

__“Do that, and just stay awake for me, okay?”_ _

__“How long?” Zayn asks, at least having the wherewithal to estimate his limits._ _

__“Two hours and change if I do 160 the whole way.”_ _

__“Fuck.”_ _

__“Piece of cake,” Niall says. “You’ve done harder things.” But Zayn can see, in his peripheral vision, the way Niall’s fingers are drumming the steering wheel nervously. “Here—” he reaches to turn the sound system on. “—sing along with every song you know.”_ _

__Zayn would like to think that he sings nonstop for the entire trip, but it honestly eventually fades to black._ _

____

︾

“Wake up,” Niall’s sing-songing in the drift. Zayn feels half-dead. “Wake up, Zayn.” He becomes acutely aware of someone, presumably Niall, slapping his face. Gentle, but still. Annoying.

“What,” he croaks. 

“Yeeaaah, buddy. He lives.” 

“Of course I’m alive. S’just a flesh wound.” 

“‘Tis but a scratch,” Niall says in affected British accent. 

“I didn’t mean to quote _Monty Python_ ,” Zayn slurs. “It was an accident.” 

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries,” Niall continues. 

“Shut up, please, shut up,” Zayn laughs, and it hurts, rather badly. He peels his eyes open and winces at the influx of light, mute as it is. Before he can say anything else, there’s a straw held in front of his mouth. Upon further inspection, it is attached to a juice box. Zayn takes it and kills it in five long pulls. Niall takes the empty carton back and tosses it while Zayn wipes his lips. 

“Where are we?”

“In a tiny bathroom of a tiny flat in Glasgow, above a Mexican cantina.” 

“In Glasglow?” Zayn asks.

“They do have everything here,” Niall says sagely. 

Zayn pushes himself a bit more upright, where he’s sitting on the toilet lid. “Wait,” he says. “We’re not supposed to be together.” He points back and forth between them.

“True,” Niall agrees. “But I’m trying to fix where you’re bleeding everywhere, if you could manage to stay awake but also shut up for a second.” 

Zayn feels a bit bad then. “Sorry, right. Let’s do this then.”

“Do you want like, a shot of vodka or? I found a bottle in the fridge.” 

“Wouldn’t tequila be more fitting?”

“Focus, please.” 

“Right. I—no, I’m fine. It’s fine. Just get it over with.” 

“Here goes,” is the last warning Zayn gets before Niall starts picking shards of glass out of his arm. Each small intrusion with the tweezers hurts, but Niall was right. He’s been through harder things. The pain is sharp enough that it snaps him into total consciousness, his senses coming back online fully. 

_My sleeve is fucking ruined,_ he thinks. And then, _Shouldn’t have identifying marks as a spy, anyway._ His internal monologue goes on like that for awhile, berating himself in a loop until Niall breaks the silence.

“Didn’t mean you actually had to shut up,” he murmurs, warm breath tickling the exposed skin of Zayn’s arm where he’s bent so low to it, eyes narrowed as he picks through the damage. “Feel free to, y’know. Talk. Ask questions. Or sing—you’re quite good at that, actually.”

“Oh fuck,” Zayn groans. “I’m sorry.”

Niall drags a deep sliver out and Zayn’s groan turns into a real gritted inhale as it goes, biting his lip to stay quiet. “No, don’t apologize,” Niall’s saying. “I meant it, you’re good.”

“Coming from the prospective music student,” Zayn manages on a shaky exhale. “That means something.”

Niall reaches down to pat his knee. “Good.” 

Zayn rolls his head back against the wall of the bathroom, swallowing deep and feeling the stretch as his throat bobs. “So. Like. What happened?”

Niall’s going after a piece that's really embedded, now, making Zayn’s jaw clench.

When he answers, it’s subdued. “I wasn’t watching, that’s what. Or. I dunno—I was watching the wrong person.” Zayn doesn’t answer, just gives him a moment to collect his thoughts and keep going. “I had no idea Asami was in the building. How long she’d been there, how she got in. Nothing. Who knows?”

“She could have been there a long time, Niall,” Zayn says. “No telling.”

“That’s the point, though,” Niall stresses, dropping glass into the sink. “That’s my job.” 

“It isn’t your fault,” Zayn says, though he knows it’s futile. When you decide to burden yourself with blame like that, only you can choose to take it off again. Zayn has a feeling Niall will carry it for a while. 

“Well. She was there. And she got you, about the same time Louis found the patent in—if you can believe it—not the vault, but a file cabinet of other patents, plain as day. Likely also stolen.”

Zayn absorbs that and nods. “He left the decoy?”

“He did.”

“Good,” Zayn says, but that’s not the part he’s so confused about. “You were on the roof.” 

Niall starts to flood Zayn’s arm with antiseptic, and Zayn has to bring his knuckles up to his mouth and bite into them, his eyes watering. 

“I was,” Niall says. “Harry and I both were. I didn’t tell Louis and Liam because, well. ‘Cause they’re being such great tits about me ever coming near a field ever again.” Zayn’s not looking, but he’s fairly sure Niall’s rolling his eyes right now. “Anyway. He helped me devise a collapsible work station, and then we practiced until we could assemble and disassemble it in less than two minutes.”

“Seems so unnecessary,” Zayn says. “You could have just been in the bloody van, like normal techies.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a normal techie. And also, it turned out to be pretty necessary, didn’t it? Had to propel off the roof and rescue your skinny arse.”

“Proper damsel in distress,” Zayn says. 

“Exactly.”

There’s silence for a bit as Niall starts to wrap Zayn’s arm, firm and even, fingers sure as they set the clasps. “I think I was supposed to end up in Austria,” he muses.

“You were. I was Glasgow. Safe houses were kind of figured with a sort of exposure-to-distance ratio in mind. So right now, Liam and Louis are definitely not in the United Kingdom anymore.” 

“Shame. Love Austria.”

“Beautiful,” Niall hums. “Those mountains.” 

“Yeah,” Zayn quiets as Niall finishes his arm. 

“Okay, just the one gash left on your face, mate. Then I’ve got a horse pill of antibiotic for you to swallow.” 

“Sounds like a party,” Zayn says. “Turn up.”

Niall laughs. “I am just seeing this whole new side of you,” he says. “Is this a ‘I-was-in-serious-danger’ thing or a, ‘I’m-in-Scotland’ thing?”

Zayn pretends to consider it, squinting. “Scotland,” he decides. “Or maybe just you.” 

Niall carefully tilts Zayn’s head under the light, his face coming into view. “I’ll take that.” 

“Holy shit,” Zayn says. “I did not, like. Properly realize, like, how many freckles you have.”

“I am Irish, after all,” Niall says.

“I know that, but. I just haven’t ever been this close to you, I s’pose.” 

Niall’s lips curl up faintly, his gaze drifting from Zayn’s cheek, their eyes meeting briefly before Niall turns back to his work. “Enjoying the view?”

_Yes_ , Zayn almost says. “S’just a lot of freckles,” he says instead, reaching up to touch an exceptionally quirky one under his nose and Niall laughs, the sound of it better than a shot of vodka ever would have been. 

He zones out after that, shutting his eyes and enjoying the warm pads of Niall’s fingers brushing against his cheek every so often. The wound doesn’t need excavating like his arm did, so the cleaning is over quickly, and Niall’s taping on a bandage before Zayn can think of anything else to talk about. 

“Horse pill time,” Niall says, dropping down to rummage through a bag on the floor before resurfacing with said antibiotic and a bottled water. Zayn takes both, Niall undoing the cap on the water bottle for him, and tosses the pill back.

Niall looks down at himself as Zayn drinks heavily, picking at his black shirt with an expression fo disgust, lips curled comically. “I’m sorry, I’m covered,” he doesn’t have to finish the sentence: _in your blood_ , just reaches behind his head to drag the shirt up and over himself. It gives way to a lean stretch of pale skin and compact muscle, interspersed with freckles the way a night sky is with stars. Zayn’s fascinated at the sharp cut of his collarbones and the sparse trail of hair that disappears under the waistband of his pants, at the pale rosebud color of his nipples. Niall balls his shirt up and tosses it in the tub to be dealt with later.

“I think I need to lie down,” Zayn says.

Beyond the tiny bathroom is a tiny bedroom, but someone did manage to squeeze a fairly large mattress into it. Niall helps Zayn to the edge of it and lets him down a little less gracefully than he repelled them out a window earlier, but hey. Nobody’s perfect, Zayn figures.

“What are you doing?” he says when Niall drops down on his haunches and pulls at one of Zayn’s bootlaces. He stills. 

“Helping you undress, is that okay?” He looks up, imploring. “I’ll leave you to it, if you want. Just. With your hand—”

“No, it’s fine. Sorry, I just,” Zayn fumbles. “Long day.” 

“I’ve got you,” Niall says, returning to his task. Something about watching his head weave close to Zayn’s knee, slim fingers working deftly, the way he cradles the heel of the boot in his hand when he gently pulls it off has Zayn’s chest growing inexplicably warm inside. He’s not sure he can catch his breath all the way, drinking in the sight of Niall’s freckled shoulders shifting. 

“Trousers now, shift up,” Niall says after he’s gotten the second boot off. Zayn fumbles to undo his trousers and the fly with one hand and then lifts his hips up, wriggling in a way he hopes is helpful as Niall pulls them off. 

Niall folds his trousers up and sets them aside and then flicks the wolf tattoo on his leg. “Fuckin knew you were hiding shit.” He grabs Zayn’s knee to haul himself back upright and Zayn swallows whatever witty rejoinder he was formulating at how warm Niall’s palm is. 

The moment doesn’t seem to stop Niall in the same way; he moves up seamlessly to tug at Zayn’s shirt, pulling it all the way up and off when he raises his arms. “You have more identifying features than you really should, Malik,” he says, eyes drifting down over Zayn’s chest. 

“I was just thinking that, oddly.” 

“I guess if you’re going to be unconventional, shouldn’t half-ass it, eh?” 

Zayn laughs a bit, stymied by the ache in his cheek, and tries not to be overly blatant about how flustered he is, now, the planes of Niall’s lithe abdomen inches from him. 

“Zayn? You all right?” Niall reaches out to tilt his chin up, moving to inspect his eyes. “Completely forgot to check you for concussion, shit.” 

Instinctively, Zayn’s hand comes up to grip Niall’s wrist. “M’fine,” he says, but he can’t bring himself to let go. 

Niall must feel that—the tremor in his good hand, or just knows, somehow; has seen the fear enough before. His gaze flickers over Zayn’s face. “Think you can sleep, or do you want me to stay up with you?” he asks, carefully neutral.

Zayn _knows_ that he could sleep, but Niall’s bare hip is so close and he really doesn’t want to be alone. 

“Stay,” he whispers, a little more vulnerable than he’d like. He isn’t sure what it is—the crash from adrenaline, probably, or the fact that the full moon is peaking through the curtains behind Niall—but he leans forward and presses the lightest kiss he can manage to the jut of bone he’s been staring at. “I’ll make it worth it,” he mumbles, embarrassed even as he says it. He closes his eyes, hyper-aware of his lashes brushing against Niall’s skin.

It must take a second to register because Niall reacts slowly, a guttural, “Fucking Christ,” muttered somewhere above Zayn eventually. He doesn’t pull away though. Zayn keeps his head down, breathing in his scent, acutely aware that the faint rusty element is from his own blood. When Niall trips one hand down along his skull, fingers threading softly through his hair, he shivers.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

Zayn turns his head, not missing the way Niall’s breath hitches at his stubble rasping against his stomach. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.” 

“Can you explain a little better, then? Maybe?” Niall says nervously, his fingertips drifting over the shell of Zayn’s ear.

“Sure,” Zayn says, licking his lips before adopting a matter-of-fact tone. “I’ve been thinking about you for weeks, and the shock I’m experiencing is making me a bit reckless.” 

“Weeks?” Niall chokes, and Zayn reaches behind him to fit his hands around the backs of Niall’s thighs, nodding silently. Niall’s thumb stroking his ear is turning his body so, so hot; his whole face feels like it’s on fire. “I just don’t want to do anything tomorrow-Zayn is going to regret,” Niall says quietly after a beat. 

Zayn squeezes the muscles trembling in his grip gently. “No regrets,” he says.

Niall’s hands move to his shoulders, pushing him back, pushing him down into the bed. “The only thing that is for certain,” he murmurs, “is that nothing is.” 

Zayn looks up at him from the pillow, meeting his gaze through the shadow over his face. “Paradox,” he says.

“Fuck,” Niall groans, then disappears momentarily. Zayn hears the sound of a belt being pulled from its loops, a zipper being undone. When Niall edges onto the mattress, Zayn sees it for the first time: the scar.

It’s long and dark, as clean as it could be for massively invasive surgery, but it’s certainly not pretty. Zayn reaches out slowly, so Niall can stop him if he wants, and touches the thick ridge of it.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Niall says, hesitating to come closer, and that’s—well, that’s just ridiculous.

“I feel like I should tell you, that. Well, I know. Like, about it,” Zayn stutters. He looks up at Niall’s face. “ _I’m_ sorry.”

Niall chews the inside of his cheek. “I figured you would find out,” he says at length. “Besides, told you to level the playing field, didn’t I?” He shrugs, then, “Does it bother you?”

Zayn frowns. “The scar?” Niall nods. “Not at all,” he says, injecting as much sincerity into the statement as possible. “I’d be more afraid of a spy with no scars.” 

“Cool, yeah.” Niall nods to himself. “Cool. Zayn?”

“Hm?” 

“Can I kiss you now?”

Zayn breathes, nearly giddy with it. “Yes.” 

Niall unfolds himself over Zayn with more patience than Zayn’s expecting, letting his weight down gradually. Their legs are skinny together, knobbly kneecaps and coarse hair, their hipbones sharp where they meet. Zayn’s toes curl in the sheets. Niall brings one palm up to cup the line of Zayn’s jaw, the other hand going to settle in the soft buzz of hair above his ear. 

“Any day now,” he teases softly, and Niall presses the last syllable of it back into his mouth with merciful lips, earning a low groan from the bottom of Zayn’s chest. 

“Impatient,” Niall mutters as he skims the bow of lips over Zayn’s thin upper one before moving down to seize him in a firm kiss. In slow sweeps, his tongue urges Zayn open for him, and there’s nothing left for Zayn to do or say but invite him in, pulse racing at how fast it turns wet and hot, just this side of sloppy as all of Zayn’s conscious thought smudges in a black blur of want. 

He can’t decide if he’s more desperate or tired; the way Niall’s tongue strokes his makes him want to melt, but the clever fingers drifting down to tuck inside the band of his pants makes his cock throb. He can feel the dull scrape of Niall’s bitten nails and he can’t help it, bucks his hips up into the touch, breaking off the kiss at the feel of their dicks grinding together. They’re both fully hard in their pants just from snogging and in one quick flash Zayn thinks: _I feel like a fucking teenager_ , and _I don’t give a motherfuck_. 

“Niall,” he groans, reaching down to clutch the slight swell of Niall’s bum, pushing him down harder, rolling his hips up, unapologetic. 

“Fuck,” Niall says in his ear, strung out. “Let me ride you.” 

“Fuck yes,” Zayn says. “Please.” 

Niall gets both their pants off in an efficient manner that befits his profession, quick and neat, unlike his mouth. He opens the bedside table and retrieves a strip of condoms, ripping one off. When he sees the look Zayn’s giving him, he shrugs. “It’s not my first time staying here.” He tosses the condom up onto Zayn’s chest and then frowns. “Don’t have lube, though.” 

“I’d offer to eat you out,” Zayn says, “but—”

“Sweet fuck, Malik,” Niall swears, fisting his dick and biting his lip. He works himself over, gathering the dribbles of precome up purposefully. “Better than nothing.” And without further ado starts to finger himself open, belly taut and quivering as he leans back. 

“Feeling pretty spoiled right now,” Zayn says, reaching to pet Niall’s thigh. “Want help?”

Niall bites his lip harder, the swollen skin turning pale where his teeth dig, and he shakes his head. “Just be a minute,” he manages, brow furrowed in concentration. “Y’can talk if you want, though.” 

Zayn can do that. He brushes his fingers further up to traverse Niall’s flank back and forth. “Remember when you texted me that picture of the crescent?”

“Ye-ah,” Niall says. 

“Didn’t answer because I went straight to wank myself off,” he confesses. “Just laid right down in bed and got off so hard to the idea of you thinking about me.” 

Niall’s head lolls back, neck exposed. “Oh my god.” 

“I knew you were attractive before that,” Zayn says. “But that was the first time I thought about taking you the fuck apart.” Niall whimpers, his fingers speeding up beneath him. “If I weren’t fucked up right now, I promise—” he skates his fingers up even higher to roll one of Niall’s nipples between his thumb and forefinger “—I’d be all over you, Niall. You’d be begging.” 

Niall swears when Zayn says his name, his body starting to blotch red. “Fuck, fuck,” he chants, withdrawing his hand. “Let’s go, I _am_ begging.” 

Zayn opens the condom unceremoniously, reaching down to jack himself quickly before rolling it on, focused, and then Niall’s hands are pressing lightly, shaking, against his chest. “Sorry,” Niall says as he tries to balance. “Just, need—” he cuts himself off as he guides the head of Zayn’s dick up, snugging against his rim. He takes a deep breath, and then he’s sinking down, jaw dropping open and eyebrows knitting together. 

Zayn’s eyes almost roll back in his head, he’s sure of it. “Tight,” he gasps. 

“Good?” Niall asks, breathless as he bottoms-out, settling into the shallow cradle of Zayn’s hips. 

“So good,” Zayn says. “You?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Just, a second.”

“Take your time,” Zayn says, gentle in spite of how badly he wants to fuck him into next week. 

“All right,” Niall says a moment later, starting to rock in short thrusts. Zayn takes Niall’s leaking cock in hand, pushing the foreskin down and thumbing at the head of it. “Okay, yeah,” Niall nods feverishly, starting to press himself up and down.

“Is this okay for your knee?” Zayn asks belatedly. 

“Don’t fucking care,” Niall says.

“Okay,” Zayn says, and then neither of them talk for a while, working to find a rhythm that supports both their injuries. Niall is incredibly hot, unrelentingly tight, and Zayn struggles to not white out every time he grinds down on his dick, filthy and desperate. 

Niall’s thighs are really starting to shake when Zayn reaches up and presses a thumb into Niall’s open mouth, gratified when Niall immediately closes around it and starts to suck, teeth grazing the pad of it lightly. “Are you gonna come?” Zayn asks, and Niall nods frantically. “C’mon then,” he coaxes. “Come for me.” 

Niall does with a long and ruined moan, all the muscles of his body clenching him into stillness, hips spasming in short, uncontrollable ticks. Zayn swears at how good it feels around him, the pressure intensifying as he helps Niall ride through it. He keeps tugging Niall’s dick until Niall’s pushing him away, yelping at the sensitivity. 

“Fucking hell,” Niall says, rising up and off of Zayn slowly. He takes two seconds to breathe while Zayn wipes his hand off in the sheets, uncaring, and then he’s rolling off the condom and tossing it away, shimmying down the mattress and shifting in between Zayn’s legs.

“Not gonna last,” Zayn warns. 

“S’okay,” Niall says, licking the head in a frankly unnecessary tease. “Terrible gag reflex, me.” And then he proceeds to take Zayn into his mouth gradually. His tongue pushes, scorching hot and messy, along the thick vein on the underside. Zayn spares a second to wonder if he’s been with many cut guys and then his mind goes blank again when Niall tenderly rolls his balls between his fingers, the tip of his pinky brushing down further.

One of Zayn’s legs kicks out reflexively as he comes, his back arching of its own accord. He feels a little bad about not warning Niall, but also, he kind of did. Niall doesn’t seem too put off, just pulls back quickly and uses his hand to work him through the aftershocks, Zayn’s come smeared on his chin. 

Whatever happens after that, Zayn only gathers in snatches: being wiped off with a warm, damp flannel; pulling feebly at Niall’s arm where he was hesitating at the head of the bed; pressing his nose to the back of Niall's neck as Niall curls into him, and then darkness.

︾

He wakes up to that universal smell of breakfast: meat, grease, and coffee. That’s the first thing he notices. The second is that several parts of his body really fucking hurt, holy shit. The third is the soft singing, and then he opens his eyes and—the bed, and the sheets, he’s naked, there’s dried come on his stomach. He rolls slightly, presses his face into the pillow. _Oh my god,_ he thinks. _We fucked last night._ It wasn’t like he was drunk, just exceptionally tired and slightly battered, so everything comes back to him in a singular rush.

How Niall had undone his boots, and how overwhelmed that simple act had made him feel. What a rush everything was after that—the little touches, the lazy kissing, the desperate fucking. 

_Fuck yes_ , he thinks. The mystery on the horizon, acquired. It’s not exactly a thing their community encourages—hooking up with one another, but. Everybody fucking does it anyway. When you want to shag without having to explain why you’re unstrapping six blades from your legs, there are only so many options.

Not that Niall is just like, some second choice. Kind of the opposite, really, with the added convenience of him knowing what Zayn does for a living. 

The tiny bedroom in the tiny flat is only separated from the tiny kitchen by mere paces, so when Zayn sits up in bed, Niall sees him right away. 

He brandishes a spatula in Zayn’s direction and says, “I have sausages—beef,” he clarifies, “and cheesy scrambled eggs, beans, and toast.” 

Zayn squints at him blearily. “Are you real?” 

Niall laughs. “Yes, I’m real. And this flat is real. And the rest of the lads are very real, and safe, just so you know. We Facetimed while you were sleeping.“

Zayn sighs, a tension he hadn’t consciously realized he was carrying easing out of him. “Good.” 

“If you want to have a shower, I’ll make you a plate.”

“Nah,” Zayn shakes his head. “Food first, shower second. Priorities.”

“I like it.” Niall takes a couple minutes to fix two plates and then carries them to the bed, a pair of sweatpants and a soft white tee covering the places Zayn’s wondering if he marked. 

“Thank you,” he says as he takes the plate and fork from Niall, crossing his legs and wrapping the sheet around him before tucking in. “So… the patent?”

“Already delivered to Sangeeta,” Niall says, wrestling a speared piece of sausage off his fork. “Liam flew overnight.”

“Do we have tabs on Green & Schultz?” 

“Mhm. They’re calling it breaking and entering, for the press. Louis made sure to take a couple other things, so those are listed. Bonds and stuff like that. The patents aren’t even being looked at, since they all look to be accounted for.”

“What about, what’s her name?” Zayn asks. “Asami?”

“Recovered from the scene before police could arrive. By her own team, I'm guessing.”

“So it looks like, what? Someone broke in the office, via the roof, just to go down a floor and steal some bonds?” 

Niall shakes his head. “It’s not tidy, I’ll agree. But you can’t have everything go according to plan. What’s important is that none of us were caught, and the patents aren’t under scrutiny. We keep a low profile for a couple months, it’ll be water off a duck’s back to us.” 

Zayn nods numbly. Niall’s right; there’s really nothing to be done about it now. 

“So,” Niall says in between forkfuls of steaming eggs. “Where you headed next?” 

Zayn mulls the question over, seriously considering it as he hasn’t until now. He thought he wasn’t much of a team player, but he’s not sure he can live without Harry’s post-it note art in his daily routine anymore. “Probably visit family, that’s pretty overdue,” he says. “And then, I dunno. Maybe…” he twists his lips to the side to avoid smiling so hard. “Maybe see if Louis has anything else coming up. Y’know. After the low profile bit.” 

Niall looks up in stark surprise, eyebrows jumping. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says. “Think I could try one more job. Or two.” 

The smile Niall gives him is guileless, unfettered happiness over the rim of his coffee mug as he bumps his knee against Zayn’s playfully, so unlike the moon now and much more like the biggest star in the galaxy. “Sick.”

**Author's Note:**

> sangeeta & patrick are real healthcare trailblazers. sangeeta has actually already developed the synthetic biomarkers in this fic & they are in use globally--what a boss. philip green has no law firm but he does have a nephew, though i don't think he's old enough to have gotten a drink with harry. the patent offices are seriously not digital yet. etophine cannot actually knock a person unconscious in seconds. i have no idea how much one would pay to recover a stolen patent. pretty sure my google search history for this fic got me redflagged by the government. huzzah!


End file.
